If Only Someone Else Had Had a Gun

January 24th, 2011

It’s a common fantasy repeated endlessly by gun enthusiasts. When you get a crazy person who walks into a crowd and starts shooting people, some of us begin to question the overly-lax gun laws and start suggesting that at least some reasonable, even ridiculously mild form of gun control–you know, like allowing clips that hold only ten bullets instead of thirty so crazy people can only shoot a more limited number of people. At which point the enthusiasts disagree (some vehemently), and that’s when they bring up the fantasy.

“It’s too bad that one of the victims wasn’t armed, or better yet, all of them,” they lament. They envision a scenario in which a shooter would immediately meet return fire and be taken down before many people got hurt. After the shooting in Arizona, local congressman Trent Franks deplored, “I wish there had been one more gun in Tucson.”

The reality is much more complicated. The fact is, there was an armed citizen nearby when Loughner began his shooting spree in Arizona; the man immediately grabbed his gun, ran to the scene of the shooting–and very nearly shot one of the people who was subduing the gunman. This was not some frazzled dimwit, but someone who seemed to know their way around a gun, who seemed completely reasonable and responsible.

As if to back up the point, in Detroit yesterday, a gunman walked into a building filled with people and opened fire, shooting one man in the back and hitting three others before someone returned fire and killed the man. You might think that this is the fantasy situation fulfilled–that there was an armed person nearby who was able to return fire. In a sense, this is true: the building was a police station. There were lots of armed people there. And yet, four people got shot before someone returned fire, and the situation was less than controlled:

“Utter chaos and pandemonium took place,” Police Chief Ralph Godbee said at a news conference. “We have a number of officers who are shaken up.”

Even when nearly everyone in the room is armed, a gunman can still do a great amount of damage. Even trained, experienced police officers do not always react like the hero-fantasy expects. If a room full of professional gun-bearers reacted like that to random gun violence, can we really expect randomly armed citizens to do much better?

Also keep in mind that in the Detroit case, the gunman did not even have as deadly a gun as Loughner did. Furthermore, these are scenarios where the gunman comes in and starts firing with no thought to protecting himself. If the gunman has even the slightest ability to plan ahead and work out a scenario more complex than “walk in and start shooting,” he could potentially employ strategies that would allow him to do even more harm against rooms filled with armed people.

As for arming everyone, let’s also remember that there are few places which require a gun owner to train in the use of the weapon or to take even rudimentary safety instruction. Is it ever a good idea to suggest that more untrained people go around armed? We would not imagine allowing people to drive cars without going through at least basic instruction and testing, and most Americans value their right to own and drive a car more than they would to own a gun. Yet few question the wisdom of training, licensing, and registration where motor vehicles are concerned.

As has been pointed out:

A panel of criminology and statistics experts with the National Research Council the National Academies published a study in 2004 that found no reduced crime in states with right-to-carry (RTC) laws.

A 2010 study from Stanford Law School found that “the most consistent, albeit not uniform, finding to emerge from the array of models is that aggravated assault rises when RTC laws are adopted.”

Now, before anyone gets on their high horse, I do not advocate gun bans. (Most gun enthusiasts immediately jump to that conclusion even when the opposite is clearly pointed out; it’s the knee-jerk straw-man argument.) But I do advocate firm, reasonable gun control, of a nature that minimizes any impact on the law-abiding citizen but maximizes impact on those who would purchase guns for illicit use. As has been pointed out, at the very least, we know that lives would have been saved had Loughner been restricted to a 10-bullet clip rather than a 30-bullet clip; the larger-capacity clip had been banned before the Republican congress let it die, and let’s face it–it is the epitome of the reasonable gun control law. No hunter or home protector needs a 30-bullet clip, it’s an accessory for people who are either too lazy to reload more often, or for people who want to kill the largest number of human beings before they have to pause before killing more.

I also question the legitimacy of the assumption that simply putting more guns in the hands of more people more of the time–especially when there is no mandatory safety training–will result in less violence. Something about that just doesn’t ring true for some reason.

Right now, a lot of the people who would still defend preventing even eminently reasonable gun control measures say that it’s about controlling the gunman, not the gun. The problem is, Loughner should have been denied the ability to buy guns and ammunition–it’s not like his unbalanced state was a secret or anything–but the same people who fight reasonable gun control measures also fight against laws which would, in fact, control the crazy people who fire guns at crowds of people. Background checks, mental instability provisions, efficient networks to register and keep track of such individuals, and other checks that could have at least slowed Loughner down are just as hated by the gun crowd, who argue that such laws either inconvenience them or could be abused by the government to disarm normal law-abiding folk.

Having armed people nearby could–potentially–save lives, if those people are properly trained. It almost certainly did in the Detroit police station. However, having more guns around is not always the best way to deal with the problem, and reasonable gun control laws are probably a much better idea.

I also question the legitimacy of the assumption that simply putting more guns in the hands of more people more of the time–especially when there is no mandatory safety training–will result in less violence. Something about that just doesn’t ring true for some reason.

I think the objection to that statement would be it’s not up to the government to limit how and when people arm themselves.

The point isn’t about reducing gun violence, the real point is 9th Amendment freedom to defend oneself, though for some reason the gun nuts don’t want to base their argument there.

Conservatives reject the liberal idea that they have to give up their rights (or even be occasionally inconvenienced) for the good of the society as a whole. They don’t want the state telling them to buckle up, and similarly they (well, now at least) don’t want the state to mandate they have health insurance.

They want to be free of the onerous burdens of living in regulated society. They believe in bottom-up distribution of power community-by-community not top-down dictates from do-gooders.

The above was largely snark, but I do think gun owners have a right to get their back up on the majority’s willingness to regulate their fun.

So a dozen or two people a year get blown away by crazy people. 4,400 people died last year in motorcycle accidents.

One thing is that the Supreme Court did recently manage a nifty ju-jitsu trick to get home defense in under the penumbra of 2nd Amendment rights to keep and bear arms, even though the originalism and the text itself offers no support of that.

I think a future Supreme Court will reverse that really shitty decision, but in the meantime gun control is not that important an issue to waste time on.

The point isn’t about reducing gun violence, the real point is 9th Amendment freedom to defend oneself, though for some reason the gun nuts don’t want to base their argument there.

Because if they did that, they would have to include other rights that right-wingers abhor, such as a right to privacy (ironically), which would make medical decisions a matter of personal choice (also ironic). So they instead resort to originalism or whatever strict-constructionism flavor of the day they decide to rely upon to tell them that the Ninth Amendment either doesn’t exist or is irrelevant.

Conservatives reject the liberal idea that they have to give up their rights (or even be occasionally inconvenienced) for the good of the society as a whole. They don’t want the state telling them to buckle up, and similarly they (well, now at least) don’t want the state to mandate they have health insurance.

The idea is that everyone should fend for themselves. However, I note that a lot of these people are the same ones demanding Medicare and Social Security checks. They bitch and moan about government spending but more often than not live in states which take more federal money than the people pay in taxes, and have no problem with earmarks or pork brought to their own districts. The same people whine about illegals using emergency rooms and in so doing stealing their hard-earned tax money–but when the Dems tried to pass health care, they said that emergency room health care was good enough solution for those who could not afford coverage.

When it comes down to it, too many in this group have theirs or demand theirs, but don’t want to have to pay their part when it comes to seeing to the needs of others.

One thing that seems fairly clear is that our Constitutional freedoms are limited when they threaten the rights of others. There are public safety exceptions for virtually every other right, but somehow gun rights alone are supposed to be sacrosanct. Baloney. Cars are fun too, but I don’t see anyone much protesting training, licensing, and registration. People might whine about seat belts and mandatory insurance, but the world goes on and we enjoy our cars. Guns are no different, perhaps even less necessary for our modern life than are cars and communications, both well-regulated.

So a dozen or two people a year get blown away by crazy people. 4,400 people died last year in motorcycle accidents.

“A dozen or two”? Snark again? Gun homicides are at about 10,000 a year, if I read the numbers right, and I don’t think that includes suicides, which I believe are a lot more. Sure, most are not taken out by mentally unstable people in high-profile cases, but we’re talking about a much broader issue–the remarkable ease of criminals and/or unbalanced people to buy weapons and ammunition, where even rudimentary controls have shown great success at limiting access. Background checks have put tens of thousands of wanted criminals in jail, and have stopped tens of thousands more illegal purchases. Do many of these buy guns on the street anyway? Yes, but (a) not as many as would have bought them, and (b) that can also be stopped by closing the gun show loophole which criminals literally drive trucks through.

In the end, gun control could make it more difficult, expensive, and risky for criminals to get their hands on guns and make guns & ammo used in crimes easier to trace, while still allowing law-abiding folks to get their Smith & Wessons with a minimum of cost & hassle.

Which they are well within their rights . . . Medicare is a 3% off-the-top income tax, and SS is up to $13,000/yr required contribution with the implicit guarantee that you’ll start getting your money back when your time in the barrel is over.

If I had stayed in the US and not gone to Japan, I’d have paid over $40,000 into Medicare already, and still have another 20 years before I qualify for it. If we still had 5% interest rates, that $40,000 would

I of course agree about your gun control stuff, but there is a great divide between rural America and urban America on this.

Out where there’s more livestock and people the rural folk just don’t want to have to deal with the same BS about guns that liberals want to impose on the society.

I thought it was great in Tokyo that I could ride my bike around that city and not find a slum and that the Japanese don’t have to waste so much resources on combating street crime.

I tend to fall on the side that gun crime is a symptom of a more fundamental problem tho.

It’s the high-profile nut cases like the Stockton school shootings that prompted reactionary gun laws.

People who are desperate to commit crime aren’t going to be stopped by draconian gun laws.

The guy who was going to shoot up the Tides Center had a somewhat limited arsenal, but it was still enough to kill everyone there. The California laws that limited his mom’s home arsenal did make the CHP’s job a little less deadly, but one guy is never going to outgun the cops for long.

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

I think this amendment is read wrong: I think it demands that we regulate gun ownership.

Here’s why:

I think it could be argued that we currently read the text of this wrong. I think that’s because over time there’s been a shift in grammar

I think the second amendment could, and maybe should be read backwards from they way it is written – and we could argue, being closer to Shakespeare’s time than our own (though not by much), that the grammar used is somewhat archaic.

I think (or least believe the second amendment could easily be construed to say):

1) States need a well regulated militia to protect themeselves (as a protection against what was then seen as superior, stronger European states) – in case the British decide to come back down from Canada, or the Spanish up from Florida, or who knows what. We beat them once because we had a well armed citizenry, we can make coming back hell to pay, in the form of guerrilla type warfare, much as we did in the last war. If we are a thorny bush, European states are going to be less likely to try and pluck us

2) Therefore, we want to encourage people to buy, keep and bear arms, and so the right to do so shall not be infringed

3) If you do you buy, keep and bear arms, you automatically become a member of your state’s militia – by default. To keep and bear arms mean you have, and are enlisted in your state’s militia, and if your state is invaded by British Forces from Canada or Spanish Force from Florida, you are expected to fight to keep yourstate free.

4) Such militia should be well regulated

Thus by the very act of buying a gun, you are joining your state’s militia by default and subject to stringent regulation for purposes of defense of your state.

What we have now, then, is 50 militia’s out there, none of which are well regulated.

Interpreted this way, means, the constitution DEMANDS that the militia be regulated.

I do not know of anyone who believes arming everyone willy-nilly is a good idea. Many of us believe that everyone should learn to use a firearm properly; but you will find no group of people more aware that a gun is not a magic wand than gun enthusiasts.

If I recall correctly, Loughner bought his gun from a dealer. That means he passed a background check. Which includes mental instability provisions. Incidentally, it also means he committed a felony; to purchase a gun he had to lie about his drug use.

The whole ‘armed civilian very nearly shot the wrong person’ thing is pure crap. He never even drew his gun.

A large magazine ban is probably the most reasonable gun control idea out there right now. The cost of it is fairly minimal, and there is a small chance it could save a life. It will also destroy a number of lives when people go to prison because of it, but I get the feeling you are not overly concerned with that.

Indeed, pro-gun advocates think like that. At my workplace, in lunchtime, they lamented about the Columbine HS shooting, which could have been stopped “if somebody had a gun to return fire”. The culprit in their mind was the tough gun control laws (and of course Clinton) which does not allow people to bring guns at schools or workplaces, in order to defend themselves.
If you listen to the rhetoric and the urban legends a group of people is circulating, you certainly are able to say who they are. These are things a I heard at lunch:
Ex1: “my son never finished the high school but works in computers, companies are dying to hire him and he makes lots of money”: shortcoming = lack of education and disregard of science (computers are not necessarily science, more technology).
Ex2: “he walked in the night with the girlfriend when a crook mugged them at knifepoint; HE draw his concealed gun, mugged the crook and bought beer with his credit card (cash, etc). Shortcoming = insecurity, inferiority complex, desire to use “the toys”.
Ex3: “we stayed the night outside looking for Mars at the closest distance from Earth, as close it would have looked as big as the Moon!!! shortcoming = compensating the lack of scientific education by consuming pseudoscience. The guy telling me that is 50+ years, does not believe in evolution or global warming; however, he believed Mars could be as big as Moon.